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The Writer’s Notebook: Michael Chabon

By Gregory Cowles March 3, 2009 1:24 pmMarch 3, 2009 1:24 pm

Fish FongMichael Chabon

Writers’ journals are like musicians’ scales: practice, but also play — a chance to keep limber and test new ideas. They offer a place for personal reflections, fictional sketches, observed anecdotes and flights of language. They’re also particularly well suited to the blog format. As an occasional feature, then, Paper Cuts will ask authors to share a journal entry with our readers.

In December 2004, I went to Beijing and Hong Kong to meet, in both cities, with the legendary director (“Drunken Master,” “Snake in Eagle’s Shadow,” “Iron Monkey”) and fight choreographer (“The Matrix,” “Kill Bill,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) Yuen Wo-Ping (always known as The Master) and his right-hand man, Mr. Fish Fong. I had just been hired by Disney to work on the script of “Snow and the Seven,” a proposed live-action martial arts retelling of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” to be set in and around Victorian Hong Kong, with fighting kung-fu monks taking the role of the dwarfs.

The meetings took place over several days.

Michael Chabon’s Beijing Journal:

Dec. 4, 2004

Today started with an 8 a.m. walk around the grounds of the Tian Tan, the Temple of Heaven, where, on top of the Mound of Heaven (a kind of tiered wedding cake of white marble) you can stand at the exact Center of the Universe. That was pretty exciting.

Then my second meeting with the Master and Fish. (“The Master and Fish” — a failed spinoff of “Barney Miller,” starring Abe Vigoda and Pat Morita?) They seemed to get deeply tangled up in prior drafts of the script. I don’t know, maybe they were feeling nostalgic. I admit I often feel that I have absolutely no idea what the M. really thinks about anything.

M. and F. floated the Grandmaster idea, and they also the floated the whole “Grandmaster sends Gwen off to YET ANOTHER G.D. TEMPLE to be trained.” I wanted to cry. I wanted to take out my tai chi sword and chop those ideas into little slices in front of their eyes, but of course I just sat there and tried to look pleasantly intransigent in what I hoped was good Chinese fashion.

O.K., so anyway, I was like, dudes, you have your prophecy-Messiah-Neo is the One-Paul Muad’dib-Return of the King-Cloud Tiger Messiah plotline that I’ve never liked but somehow to my surprise and totally against my will has somehow crept back into the story. Now you want the Grandmaster and the Other Temple. Why don’t we just slap the English fiance who’s really a demon back in there, too, and I can just go shopping for my kids and you can shoot right off the prior draft?

Actually, like I said, I just sat there pretending to consider these suggestions and smiling.

So, I had a few moments of despair. A few moments where I thought, oh, my God, he hates all of it! But I was brave, and they passed.

The biggest bump came when he suddenly said that he doesn’t want there to be a monkey, that the character of Dr. Ha can’t “turn into” a monkey, no monkey, the whole monkey thing is very, very bad. Why? Because — I don’t really get it, but — because of “Iron Monkey.” Because more
monkeys will detract from that film, or he has some special relationship with that film and its monkey (even though I can’t remember an actual monkey in that film) — I don’t know.

We came up with this cool idea for a village-marketplace setting that would be among these strange people who live on the river in boats, the Dongxiaren (sp?). Very exotic with the women wearing their hair down to their ankles, etc. And the abbot could join them there.

I really get the feeling that if the Master had his way he would just grab a bunch of actors and some cameras and start shooting. I’m not sure how valuable the whole story-conferencing process is with regard to big plot issues. But, what he’s TERRIFIC at is coming up with bits of revealing business — gags, basically — and I wish I could have him in the room with me when I actually sit down to write. I’ve taken careful notes of all the fun stuff he’s come up with on the fly.

Then, lunch. Yunnan regional cuisine: Some of it was KIND of weird — ever have Chinese salami? —but most of it was great.

Then a visit to the Wushu school, which was sort of grim and sweet at the same time. It’s a boarding school in the middle of this vast wasteland of rubble and garbage on the outskirts of Beijing, hideous crumbling Maoist dormitories, and these kids as young as 4 running around kicking stuff and waving foil swords. They were adorable and put on a show that was, well, showy: a lot of breaking bricks on little shaved skulls and smashing each other with poles. The Master and Fish seemed a bit uninterested in the show. I guess that it was a display of “exterior qi” and what they wanted me to see was “interior qi.”

Which came next, at the Qi Gong school. I submitted myself to a treatment. The doctor started by pressing one hand to the back of my head and the other he held in front of my forehead, about an inch away. And I could feel this intense heat radiating from his fingers to my forehead across the gap, and my skin tingled. Then he had me lie down on this table and he CUPPED me! These round glass globules, open at one end, and he screws them into your back at your pressure points and then LIGHTS THEM ON FIRE. Whoa.

It pinched, more than hurt, but it definitely felt really strange. And now I guess all the “coldness” has been sucked out of me, which can only be a good thing, right? I was impressed by the really simple, non-Key-Luke way he talked about qi, like it was tap water or air.

A few lines in here remind me of Harlan Ellison’s wickedly funny comments on working with (more accurately, failing to work with and finally storming out on) the studio guys on the movie version of Star Trek 25 years or so ago. Plus ca change.

Nice to hear you talking about writer’s notebooks, which by the way is the name of my forthcoming book to be released in 2009 by the University of South Carolina Press called THE WRITER’S NOTEBOOK, an anthology of well-published writers who keep journals.

I have been keeping a notebook for 40+ years — i think it was an inherited gene. My grandmother did the same. Check out my memoir, REGINA’S CLOSET: FINDING MY GRANDMOTHER’S SECRET JOURNAL!

Dear Michael,
Almost at the end of Gentlemen of the Road, which i didn’t enjoy as much as Cavalier and Clay, and most of all the Yiddish Policeman’s Union. But still you do have a wonderful way with words. YaasherCoach!!!
A few weeks ago our Cinemateque in Rosh Pina showed Mel Brooks “Blazing Saddles”. This is what the Gentleman of the Road remined me of.Good Show.;!!

As for the Yiddish Policeman’s Union, the science fiction book of the Jews, I can’t believe how much you hit the nail on the head.(sorry for the goyishe connotation. I’ have seen what goes on in Israel, and you’re description of the control over the ERUV, is right on. And so is the infighting and bullying when necessary. Our lazest cavorts have lad to t charicature yesterday in Haarez: Biderman draws a pictuer of Rav Litzman ( the head of the Finance Committee in the Knesset), and who p[roposed tha we move the whole emergency room of Ashkelon to somewhere else due to the fact that there is a very ancient cemetary ( not of Jews). For that Yossi Biderman drew a picture of Rav Litzman pouring money into the graveyard, and the inhibaitnts are labled. “The GRATEFUL DEad”/ just great sarcaism. \
So, i just bought this new wireless keyboard, and it screws up my rhythm, my keyboard strokes etc. So I bid you a Zissen Pesach, and you should know that i am one of your greatest fans. Two years I travelled to Uzbekistand and Buchara so i know aht your’ talking about. “Fogive theTYPOS.